After Malta’s first-ever mission was proudly sent to the International Space Station, and its presence in space was subsequently confirmed,
SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft completed its 23rd Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-23) mission to and from the International Space Station for NASA, successfully returning to Earth and splashing down off the coast of Florida on Thursday, 30 September at 22:57 EDT.
Dragon undocked from the International Space Station on Thursday, 30 September at 09:12 EDT and then performed three burns of its Draco thrusters to move away from the orbiting laboratory.
After an approximate 14-hour journey, the spacecraft re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and deployed its two drogue and four main parachutes for a soft water landing in the Atlantic Ocean. CRS-23 used Cargo Dragon C208-2, a Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft from SpaceX. The spacecraft concluded its second flight to space when it splashed down on Friday, previously launching on the CRS-21 mission in December 2020.
Project Maleth’s SpaceOMIX mission began on August 29, when a Falcon 9 launched from historic LC-39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The following day, Cargo Dragon C208-2 successfully docked to International Docking Adapter-2 (IDA-2), the forward-facing docking port on the Harmony module of ISS, and commenced the 30-day long space mission to study human skin cells and bacteria that grow around infected wound ulcers of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus patients.
The study, will now resume at the laboratories of the University of Malta, as well as with collaborators based in the USA. Professors Afshin Beheshti from the NASA Ames Research Centre, and Christopher Mason from the Weill Cornell Medicine, USA will jointly work on the genetics and systems biology of the samples and determine the effects of spaceflight on both human and bacterial cells. The identification of new or novel signatures from this work may pave the way for better therapeutics aimed at treating the diabetic foot ulcers by targeting more precisely the microorganisms.
The fundamental knowledge gained from these experiments may also be carried forward to more research projects currently being planned for the next missions on board the ISS.